Friday Failures, part 1

I need to come clean and share with you that the backyard farm isn't all success.  So from time to time I'll let you in on some of our failures.  Here's the first of several upcoming installments...

I mentioned (and have shared photographic proof of this fact) that I do keep it pretty tight in the ground portion of our garden.  Everyone has their row, and the rows are arranged alphabetically, or by plant type (i.e., salad is all in one place; tomatoes are next to each other).  I weed that area at least once a week (easy to do while the plants are small; much bigger job once they start to grow) and it's generally kind of nice looking.

But.. it's not all like that.  Our garden also has a seedier side.  You've seen the hot mess that the peas have made.  Perpendicular to that is another raised bed, and... well, let's just say that if my garden were a Monopoly board, it would be Baltic Ave.  You know, the dark blue neighborhood where everything is really cheap.  If it were an actual neighborhood, it would be the kind where people have cars parked on their lawns.  Not just for graduation parties.

This is where thyme is allowed to grow to the size of a large shrub, occasionally flowering (failure #1).  Where asparagus just sits around looking like a fern, producing one edible stalk per season (failure #2, 3 years running and, upon reflection, possibly due to the thyme shrub?).  The part of town where we're still using tawdry metallic pinwheels to keep birds away from the strawberry plants that lazily take up space and little else (failure #3 - this year's count is 2 berries, one chewed by birds.  Too early to call the second one).  The side of the tracks where you can just sow carrots wherever you want, with no regard for the alphabet or whether they belong in a dish with their neighbor, because every other plant will just turn a blind eye (although the carrots do seem to be the one success so far in this low-rent neighborhood).  This box is our garden's dirty little secret.  And you can build plastic houses here cheap.